Think of the Japanese people. Soon Japan will no longer be able to afford importing 100% of their energy needs. When Japan runs out of US dollars, and no distributor will accept yen for oil (Japan has no gold to speak of) the shipments will stop.

Without nuclear energy, Japan will freeze up. No food distribution (regardless of how radioactive it is), no water, nothing. Modern civilization cannot function without energy.

Renewable energy is not a viable alternative for an entire country dependent on fossil fuels and, especially in Japan's case, nuclear power. Or at least not in the timeframe Japan has left.

The fate of the rest of the world is not Japan's concern, obviously. They will do whatever they can to keep the country running, regardless of the outcome. Every other country will do the same.

"The government should restart nuclear reactors as early as possible and maintain nuclear power generation as a national policy so that it accounts for a certain ratio of the energy supply in Japan," said committee member Sadayuki Sakakibara, chairman of Toray Industries Inc."

Nominating Moniz is a disgrace, as is Lisa what's-her-name to take over for Steven Chu (I think they are two separate nominees for two separate departments. Moniz may be for Interior, or Lisa-Whoever for that. Someone can get that straight.) She headed the radiation monitoring following the disaster. She is absolutely the WRONG person for the job. Obama has done some good things (God knows, the other side would probably be worse), but we are dismayed at the likes of this. When I found out that he had floated Caroline Kennedy's name for Ambassador to Japan, I wanted to puke.

First, PM Shinzo Abe is A REALLY BAD GUY. Look up Yoichi Shimatsu explaining that Abe was RESPONSIBLE for bringing MOX fuel to Japan in collusion with the Cheney cabal in Texas. Abe wants Japan returned to MILITARY glory. Second, this is just a sick masquerade. No one starts up reactors already melted into corium!! But do the masquerade with Fukushima and maybe you can break down resistance to starting OTHER reactors in Japan. Abe and others belong in The Haag for crimes against humanity, but that is (obviously) unlikely to happen. But the thing is, it's NOT JUST POLITICS and IT"S NOT JUST JAPAN. The likes of Abe is recklessly and willfully endangering every living creature on Earth.

“The facts about clandestine American and Israeli support for Japan's nuclear armament are being suppressed in the biggest official cover-up in recent history. The timeline of events indicates the theft from America's strategic arsenal was authorized at the highest level under a three-way deal between the Bush-Cheney team, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Elhud Olmert's government in Tel Aviv. …

“In early 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Tokyo with his closest aides. Newspaper editorials noted the secrecy surrounding his visit – no press conferences, no handshakes with ordinary folks and, as diplomatic cables suggest, no briefing for U.S. Embassy staffers in Tokyo. …

“Since the Liberal Democratic Party selected him as prime minister in September 2006, the hawkish Abe repeatedly called for Japan to move beyond the postwar formula of a strictly defensive posture and non-nuclear principles. Advocacy of a nuclear-armed Japan arose from his family tradition. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi nurtured the wartime atomic bomb project and, as postwar prime minister, enacted the civilian nuclear program. His father Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister, had played the Russian card in the 1980s, sponsoring the Russo-Japan College, run by the Aum Shinrikyo sect (a front for foreign intelligence), to recruit weapons scientists from a collapsing Soviet Union….”http://rense.com/general94/secbb.htm

From Seymour Hersh's best selling book "The Samson Option", quoting former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: "We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the middle east with us whenever we go." And quoting a “former Israeli govt official” with “first hand knowledge of his government’s nuclear weapons program”: “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.”

I guess thats one way to say to the world , thank you for saving us from the nazis and thank you america for corrupting your own country and the world to continue to support our "interests" .
Thank you !

Fukushima Dai-ichi 5,6 are badly damaged, and even if you could swap out the core fuel
the facility has taken Earthquake and tsunami damage. All the port side hardware will need replacing,
the basements have lots of spilled radiation in them. All the support buildings are heavily
contaminated.

How you get people to work there without tyvek suits and face masks.

It's ridiculous to even discuss restarting any of the 13 damaged reactors in Tohuko.

The others you could restart but, it's cheaper to put PV on the roof of every structure in Japan

Daini isn't much better.. they had major problems with #1.. and #4 was so bad they have opened it up and taken it apart… damaged fuel if I'm not mistaken!
Daiiachi #5 did a self-start of the core with the damned lid off!.. I have Photo & Vid evidence of that shite! They had control rods fail during the quake, and they shook RIGHT-OUT of the PILE! Then the lid wouldn't fit back on it! That's why they called in the jerks who made it!
#6 is the ONLY one they didn't get more than FLOODED and lose power on.. but that's not even certain!
Re-START #5..? With a FISSURE running Right UNDER it's south-west corner!? It goes right out to the shore.. it ATE almost half the cars in the dry storage parking lot! Took down the high-volt power-tower that feeds both 5 & 6… and left FLAMING HOLES behind that are still MAJOR PROBLEMS!!
THAT is TOTALLY INSANE !!!!

We never heard much about Daiichi 5 and 6. Possibly a policy of don't report anything unless you are FORCED to, and reactors 1-3 EXPLODED, and 4 looks like a combo of the bombed-out Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's good to get a bit of a fill-in on 5 and 6. Thank you for that, PattieB. But of course, Shinzo Abe cannot possibly want a re-start of these plants. It's just a PR ploy to push Japan into further nuclear insanity.

I know it's not related to this topic, but I'm looking for a recent and accurate map of Japan showing the contaminated areas. If you have any good links, please kindly post them here.. I need to care about the origin of the food I buy since I live in Japan.

We feel for you and hope you are safe. Buy as far away from Fukushima as you can. But of course you must realize that no one there tells the TRUTH about contamination. Just recently on this website was an article from Japan saying that ALL food in Japan is "free of radioactive substance," which is a patent deliberate lie. But if you google japan food contamination, there are probably honest people out there working on it. Good luck.

Thank you for your message and your kind support. The only thing I can rely on is indeed to buy the food far away from the accident. With much care, that is still possible for simple food, but we don't have any control on mixed food, prepared dishes or restaurant food. I bet the contaminated food are more easily sold to those who prepare the food for selling.. it's cheaper and opaque.
I'm not Japanese native speaker, so it's quite difficult for me to read the origins on the labels of the products. At least in Japan, the origins from abroad are written in Katakana which makes it easy to recognize safe imported food. As for the food produced in the country, I need to check on a map the matching Chinese characters of the prefectures' origins.
I have not been able to find a recent reliable map with Google.. I need something like this but much wider:http://a136.idata.over-blog.com/580×1140/4/37/62/00/voir-fukushima/52/carte.jpg
Can someone help me please?

P.S. We haven't a clue what is safe in the U.S. either! If the U.S. government is testing (and they probably are!) no one here is told. So in our household, we just avoid fish and dairy at the least. Green leafy vegetables also tend to accumulate more radiation. It has to be harder in Japan, which is obviously "Ground Zero," but also so much of the food supply is from the sea. We read on this website that the Japanese government may be forcing other prefectures to accept Fukushima food. That obviously should NOT happen. Just keep asking questions and check the best you can.

safe·ty [seyf-tee] Show IPA
noun, plural safe·ties.
1.the state of being safe; freedom from the occurrence or risk of injury, danger, or loss.
2.the quality of averting or not causing injury, danger, or loss.
3.a contrivance or device to prevent injury or avert danger.
4.Also called lock, safety catch, safety lock. a locking or cutoff device that prevents a gun from being fired accidentally.
5.the action of keeping safe.

"the understanding of local governments and residents would be necessary to resume operations."

Shinzō is right on this, I think few of them uninformed locals will understand the growth economy needs their denial of the truth more than ever and acceptance of the collateral damage by nukes.

Exactly Stock, -it's Tepco's fault – not the government of Japan and its economic masters or allies , not the industry, not the nature of the nuke game.
Tepco assumes "responsibility" and adjusts its future behaviour to less all will be well. Japan will be (the paradise for big nuke once again).

We should stop calling Tepco on this. There is no "safe way" to operate these disasters.

TepGov have absolutely NO idea what 'safety' means!! I mean, who in their right minds would have the power switchboards in a TEMPORARY vehicle and with NO backup in the event of failure ……….
And as for possible restart of reactors, I came across this news item from 22nd March '13..http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/101604.php:
French nuclear energy firm Areva says it is preparing to ship recycled plutonium fuel to Japan. The firm made the announcement on Wednesday.

The shipment will be the first since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, that triggered one of the world's worst nuclear accidents.

Areva produces plutonium-uranium mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, from spent nuclear fuel to burn for power generation. It has made 4 shipments to Japan, the last was in 2010.

Areva is VERY bad news. See the YouTube, "Secret Nuclear Waste, the Dark Side of Humanity." They have been heavily polluting the English Channel for years on end. They got around international laws preventing dumping at sea (from ships) by letting in into the sea DIRECTLY. They do a lot of fuel re-processing work with Russia too. France has some of the WORST pro-nuclear maniacs on Earth.

Well.. let us assume that the officials do not want the elderly refugees to drop dead when there is no hope for them to return…
Otherwise, there is not such a reopening of nuclear plant to happen ever in that region …

Time for the FINAL SOLUTION> Declare multinational war against Japan and take over Fukushima for the sake of life. New laws needed that can criminalize nations based on their irresponsible nuclear-greedy actions.

Fukushima was a Nuclear Weapons factory, that is the TRUTH. TEPCO execs and the rest must be stopped before this escalates even further.

Abe is sending a message to us all… "I can spit in your face and you can't do anything to stop me."

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